This week, seven families laid the remains of their loved ones to rest in the Tianshou cemetery on the outskirts of Beijing. But these were burials with a difference. The families rode in golf carts made to look like hearses and scattered flower petals over a small plot of grass where biodegradable jars containing the ashes of their relatives were buried.

The area reserved for the green burials can fit more 2,000 of the jars, buried in layers in the